Sunday, December 15, 2013

Open Letter to Intelligence Employees: [1]

At
least since the aftermath of September 2001, Western Governments and
Intelligence Agencies have been hard at work expanding the scope of
their own power, while eroding privacy, civil liberties and public
control of policy. What used to be viewed as paranoid, Orwellian,
tin-foil hat fantasies turned out post-Snowden, to be not even the whole
story.

What's
really remarkable is, that we've been warned for years that these
things were going on: Whole-sale surveillance of entire populations,
militarization of the Internet, the end of privacy.

All
is done in the name of "National Security" which has more or less
become a chant to fence off debate and make sure governments aren't held
to account – that they can't be held to account– because
everything is being done in the dark; secret laws, secret
interpretations of secret laws by secret courts - and no effective
parliamentary oversight whatsoever.

We are your friends – Big Brother loves you!

By
and large the media have paid scant attention to this, even as more and
more courageous, principled whistle-blowers stepped forward. The
unprecedented persecution of truth-tellers, initiated by the Bush
administration and severely accelerated by the Obama administration, has
been mostly ignored, while record numbers of well-meaning people are
charged with serious felonies simply for letting their fellow citizens
know what's going on.

It's
one of the bitter ironies of our time that while John Kiriakou (ex-CIA)
is in prison for blowing the whistle on U.S. torture, the torturers and
their enablers walk free.

Likewise WikiLeaks-source Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning was charged with – amongst other serious crimes – aiding the enemy (read: the public).Manning
was sentenced to 35 years in prison while the people who planned the
illegal and disastrous war on Iraq in 2003 are still treated as
dignitaries.

Numerous
ex-NSA officials have come forward in the past decade, disclosing
massive fraud, vast illegalities and abuse of power in said agency,
including Thomas Drake, William Binney and Kirk Wiebe. The response was
100% persecution and 0% accountability on part of neither the NSA nor
the government.

Blowing
the whistle on powerful factions is not a fun thing to do, but despite
the poor track record of Western media, whistle-blowing remains the last
avenue for for truth, balanced debate and upholding democracy – that
fragile construct which Winston Churchill is quoted as calling "the
worst form of government, except all the others".

The Winds They Are A Changing

Since
the summer of 2013 the public has witnessed a shift in debate over
these matters. The reason is that one courageous person, Edward Snowden,
not only blew the whistle on the litany of government abuses but made
sure to supply an avalanche of supporting documents to a few trustworthy
journalists.

The echoes of his actions are still heard around the world – and there are still MANY revelations to come.

Now The Public Need You

For
every Daniel Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Katharina Gun, Manning or Snowden
there are thousands of civil servants who go by their daily job of
spying on everybody and feeding cooked or even made-up information to
the public and parliament, destroying everything we as a society pretend
to care about.

Some
of them may feel favourable towards what they're doing, but many of
them are able to hear their inner Jiminy Cricket over the voices of
their leaders and crooked politicians – and of the people whose intimate
communication they're tapping.

Hidden away in offices of various
government departments, intelligence agencies, police forces and armed
forces are dozens and dozens of people who are very much upset by what
our societies are turning into: at the very least , turnkey tyrannies.

● You were taught to respect ordinary people's right to live a life in privacy

●
You don't really want a system of institutionalized strategic
surveillance that would make the dreaded Stasi green with envy – do you?

Still, why bother? What can one person do?

Well, Edward Snowden just showed you, what one person can do.

He
stands out as a whistle-blower both because of the severity of the
crimes and misconduct that he is divulging to the public – and the sheer
amount of evidence he has presented us with so far – more is coming.
But Snowden shouldn't have to stand alone, and his revelations shouldn't
be the only ones.

You can be part of the solution; provide
trustworthy journalists – either from old media (like this newspaper) or
from new media (such as WikiLeaks) with documents that prove what
illegal, immoral, wasteful activites are going on where you work.

There
IS strength in numbers; you won’t be the first – nor the last - to
follow your conscience and let us know what’s being done in our names.

Truth is coming – it can't be stopped. Crooked politicians will be held accountable: It's in your hands to be on the right side of history and accelerate the process.

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